Even the all-time greats have slumps, and Todd Pletcher was suffering through a rare bad patch as spring turned to summer. He won only one race in June -- which was hard to believe-- and seven in July as his pursuit of a 6,000th victory slowed to a crawl. He joked that he hoped he would get there this year.
Saratoga has always been his happy place, and Pletcher snapped out of it with five wins there on Aug. 1. He became only the seventh trainer to win 6,000 on Aug. 8, when Versailles Road won the 14th and final race on the Whitney card. The feat that seemed inevitable finally became history.
“I was hoping it would happen here,” said Pletcher, who owns 15 training titles at the Spa. “It's always special to win here.”
As he told BloodHorse in 2021, “What I recognized early in my career while working for Wayne [Lukas] was that Saratoga is a place where you need to do well. It's a very special place. It's where the owners want to be and where they want to be successful.”
Pletcher is as low-key as it gets, rarely displaying much emotion after a major triumph or a bad beat in a Triple Crown race. The son of former trainer J.J. Pletcher has never been someone who makes it about himself, and he always gives credit to his staff. But after his 6,000th win, he did stop to share what was going through his mind.
“It's a hard business to reflect on much, but it's weird how when you get to one of these big milestones, you start thinking about all the individual wins -- they add up. It gives you an appreciation of just how special each and every win is.”
He started compiling them on Jan. 26, 1996, about a month after going out on his own after six years as an assistant to Lukas. Pletcher's first trip to the winner's circle came at Gulfstream Park, another track where he's dominated for decades. If you believe in omens, the horse's name was a tip-off -- Majestic Number. As in 6,000.
Resume Reading: Reading through the 59-year-old Pletcher's list of accomplishments will give you eye strain. He's the all-time leader in earnings (more than $526 million). He's won the Kentucky Derby (G1) twice and the Belmont Stakes (G1) four times. He has 16 Breeders' Cup trophies and a record eight Eclipse Awards as leading trainer. On the wins list, Pletcher trails only Steve Asmussen (11,297), Dale Baird (9,445), Jerry Hollendorfer (7,777), Jack Van Berg (6,523), King Leatherbury (6,508) and Scott Lake (6,489).
Pletcher always gave props to his late mentor Lukas for showing him how to run a top barn. “It was tremendously organized,” he said last year. “You just couldn't think of a better place to learn.” Pletcher has been by far the most successful protege of "The Coach," a distinguished group that includes Brad Cox, Mike Maker, Kiaran McLaughlin, Dallas Stewart, George Weaver and Mark Hennig.
Lukas credited “his guys” for much of his success. “They put me on their shoulders and put me right into the Hall of Fame,” he said in 2017.
Weaver is also part of Pletcher's training tree, along with two-time Preakness Stakes (G1) winner Michael McCarthy, Jonathan Thomas, Horacio De Paz, Whit Beckman and Amelia Green.
To Mike Repole, Pletcher's longtime No. 1 owner, Todd has no equal among current North American trainers. As the total package, Repole gives Pletcher the edge over two other all-conquering horsemen, Bob Baffert and Chad Brown. Repole pointed to Pletcher's tremendous record on both dirt and turf; Baffert's grass stats are weak, and the great majority of Brown's best runners have been on turf.
When Repole introduced Pletcher at his 2021 Hall of Fame induction ceremony, he said: “He's an icon, he's a legend, he's going to go down as one of the greatest of all time.”
Like his relentless march to 6,000, that's a sure thing.
Ed McNamara is an award-winning racing writer who has covered the sport since 1981 for The Bergen (N.J.) Record, Newsday, ESPN, Thorocap, and USRacing. He is the author of Cajun Racing: From the Bush Tracks to the Triple Crown and Racing Around the World, and a contributor to The Most Glorious Crown and The Racetracks of America. He has also written for racing publications in France and Italy.
